1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus and methods for easily and efficiently scanning photos from film and processing the scanned data to enable the user to generate high quality copies for printing or display, as desired. The invention also relates to programs of instructions for implementing various aspects of the photo extraction and processing technique.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the convenience and high quality reproducibility that digital images offer and the increased capability of today's scanners, many people are converting images, such as film or slides (negatives or positives), into digital images to display, print, transmit, store, etc. To do this, a user first places a set of picture frames, e.g. film negatives, in an appropriate template or holder and places the holder on the scanner bed. There are holders for most, if not all, film formats, and there may be more than one type of holder for a given film format. The pictures are then scanned and then reproduced.
The problem is that often the overall process can be somewhat burdensome and time consuming to produce the results that the user wants. Care must be taken to correctly place the pictures in the holders and also to correctly place the holders on the scanner bed. Moreover, sometimes the user may only be interested in certain select frames and therefore may not want to spend the time and resources to generate a high quality reproduction of each frame. The user may simply wish to quickly view all of the frames and then select which of the frames to send to the printer/copier for high quality reproduction.
Conventional systems do not provide an easy and efficient way to handle such processing requirements.